Wednesday, April 07, 2004

Is one misogynistic, fundamentalist religion better than another?

Efforts to dehumanize Muslims continue unabated. Now we all have our blind spots, but it really takes a superhuman effort at willful ignorance in this day and age to look at two groups of people commiting violence and declare one "barbaric" and the other "heroic" based on nation, race, and particularly religion? I am in no way, shape or form defending what happened in Fallujah (and am a little annoyed that the apparent fact still has to be S-P-E-L-L-E-D-O-U-T.), but to clutch your pearls and pretend that we are not capable of violence when we just invaded a country unprovoked is well, willful ignorance.
What is particularly irritating about this slam against Islamic fundamentalism is that he is implying a comparison to Christian fundamentalism in this country and finding that since Islamic fundamentalism is more violent, that is because Islam is inferior to Christianity. But in reality, the biggest difference is that our secular government reins our freaky fundies in.
One of Davis's examples of how wicked Muslims are:
Some will interject that the Saudis are not to be forgotten—whose religious police recently allowed trapped school girls to be incinerated rather than have them leave the flaming building unescorted, engage in public amputations, and behead adulteresses.That is incredibly deplorable. I have nothing but hate for men who use the government to hurt and oppress women like this. And also for those who feel that women should be forced to carry babies for rapists. The difference is only that these guys got fired. There is already a press for government protection for pharmacists who wish to use their religious beliefs as an excuse to oppress women.
We are different than Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. And in order to stay that way, we need to be able to face down Christian fundies who wish to wield government to force their religious beliefs on the public at large.